As time goes by quilt

Another quilt completed! Time for a process recap. Grab a cup of coffee and bear with me for a moment while I jot down the details. Yes, my own memory is literally that leaky that I need to document this or else I will probably forget most of it.Ahem.

The details:
Fabric used was a lot of Lucky Penny by Alison Glass, released by Andover Fabrics.
There’s a wee bit of Robert Kaufman Kona Solids in there, too. Not nearly enough.
The pattern is As Time Goes By by Quilter’s Junction of Junction City, Oregon.

Perhaps my favorite thing about this quilt is that it’s DONE. It was a Block of the Month pattern that I made in a quilt group that I’m a part of. So it took a whole year…one complicated square at a time. No wait, my favorite thing about this quilt was the social aspect: something entirely new for me. Getting together with like minded makers…in real life? What a novelty!The back is pieced together with leftover scraps from the top.

This…is not my favorite quilt that I’ve ever made. Not by a long shot. I picked out my fabric in a hurry with an impatient toddler in tow. I NEVER do this, for the obvious reasons. I usually just pull from my stash (at least 75%) for a quilt. I can take my time and this works for me. Turns out, picking out all the fabric in one fell swoop does not work for me. I couldn’t visualize what would go where, and I did a rotten job of picking out fabric. Value, schmalue. Who needs contrast? Just let it all blur together! The good news? I got to wince at my fabric choices twice a month, one of those times in front of much more experienced quilters than myself.

I hand quilted it. Yeah. I know. It was insane. I just wanted to have the experience of hand quilting. I stitched (more or less) in the ditch of every seam. It took all of my hand sewing time for about three months. (Sorry, poor neglected hexies!) By the time the blocks were all hand quilted, I felt I had enough of that for this quilt, so I machine quilted the sashing and borders. It was faster than light speed compared to hand quilting. It was ludicrous speed!

For me there are two kinds of quilts: art quilts, and hobby quilts. I like to make both. A lot. I think both are necessary forms of creative expression. This pattern helped me to really crystallize this definition for myself:
Hobby quilts= just for fun. Someone else’s pattern.
Art quilts= the stuff I design myself that expresses…stuff. (Or “important work” as Michael Nobbs and Merlin Mann put it. Wait, does Mr. Mann actually say “important work”, or does he just seriously imply it by talking all around it? Back to work with me.)

The bottom line:
I feel like I learned a LOT from this quilt. Things like technique: how to make flying geese and half square triangles and stuff. Also, that it’s extremely important to blast yourself far out of your comfort zone and make things you wouldn’t normally. Stretch the creative muscles and all that. Straight lines are good for you. Like vitamins.

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Absolutely Small is textile artist Claire Chambers. Claire Chambers is a crazy-pants artist/crafter who spends most of her time indoors, very near to Portland, Oregon. She likes making people laugh, chickens and pugs, and writing about herself in the third person. She is utterly obsessed with making things out of fabric.